Netbeans at Swinburne University

Hello fellow Netbeans education users (enthusiasts?).

      We'd just like to add to the comments posted by Robert Demmer
that originated from an email we sent him.  
      
For us, at Swinburne University down in Oz, Netbeans is attractive for
the following reasons.

* There is good support for new students - syntax and error
highlighting, code reformatting, bracket matching, sensible templates,
GUI painting, debugging etc.

* There is good support for more advanced students: database, CVS,
JUnit, JSP, servlets etc.

*  Its open source and free.  That means we don't have to get into
endless negotiations with management every time we want to extend its
use or upgrade to a new version.  It also means that we can reasonably
expect our students to install it at home in order to do their
homework.

* It works well with other open source products (Linux, Ant, JUnit,
mySQL etc)

* It works seamlessly across our Windows and Linux workstations.

* There is good help, online documentation, and tutorial material

Our main problems with Netbeans are:
* complexity of the interface (not a showstopper)
* performance (on our P3 800's with 256 meg of memory)
* installation can be tricky for students at home
* despite the good documentation we find ourselves writing lots of
'howtos' to talk students through particular situations.  

It seems to us that the ways in which we academics could be most
usefully be involved in the total netbeans effort are to:

* contribute, evaluate and review learning material
* contribute ideas towards standards and organisation for a central
'education' site 
* contribute ideas towards making Netbeans more attractive to education
users
* act as a testbed for the implementation of new ideas



The other aspect of Netbeans we are really interested in is student
involvement.  Our students learn best when the tasks they are presented
with are 'real' and creative.  As an example, the website they maintain
for their own projects (http://cit3.cdn.swin.edu.au) has had far more
effort and ingenuity expended on it than any comparable compulsory
exercise.  We would like to see students contributing both documents and
software to Netbeans.



Richard Forster and Laurie Johns
Swinburne University
Australia